#National Boycott
2 messages in this thread
To All Amiga Retailers, Developers and Owners:
Something extremely important has come to my attention, and I feel duty
bound to bring it to everyone's attention, and ask eveyone's help.
Electronic Arts, a software publisher of some renown, has decided not
to remove copy protection from their Amiga productivity software. Instead, they
are now providing two copy-protected disks per package. Some would say that
this is a reasonable solution and there are instances in which I would agree.
This definitely is not one of them.
As we all know (everyone except Electronic Arts, that is) the copy
protection of utility-type productivity software precludes its use on a hard
disk drive and for the most part tends to defeat any multi-tasking operation.
Also, Electronic Arts, which I assume has their software duplicated in
sufficiently large quantities, has decided to charge the consumer an additional
$20.00 for this second disk. If they bought their disks retail, they would pay
just over two dollars for that disk. And they want to bilk you for $20.00
??!!??
I must demand of Electronic Arts (and I hope that you will join me)
that they give up this nonsense. Fortunately for us, they are not the only show
in town anymore. Aegis has come out with their graphics productivity program
and with their animation software, both of which will fit nicely on my
soon-to-be-purchased hard disk drive. As the manager of an authorized Amiga
dealership, I am in a somewhat unique position to influence the minds of many
present and potential Amiga owners. I have come to a conclusion: I shall no
longer recommend Electronic Arts productivity software. In fact, until
Electronic Arts either drops their retail price on Deluxe Paint back to where
it was or comes up with a scheme to remove copy protection so their software
can be installed on a hard drive and legitimate backups can be made, I will
recommend against buying any software from them. I hope to persuade the owner
of the store I manage to remove their products from the shelf entirely until a
resolution of this major problem comes about.
I could'nt agree with you more. I bought DPaint last week (In New York, I
live in Ireland – to return the package I have to travel 3000 miles!!) When I
tried it in my Amiga I accidently attempted to save a picture back to the
DeluxePaint disk )it wasn't write- protected – EA don't care if I destroy it
as long as I don't copy it) The write failed because there wasn't enough room
but now the disk won't validate and I can't copy the files onto a good disk.
I'm going to spend a while trying to copy the disk and if that fails I'm
going to buy someone else's paint program instead. In future where equivalent
products exist protected and non- protected, I intend to buy the
non-protected product. All the best. Denis Hennessy (A Fellow Sufferer).